The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before embarking on this subject, we must realise that since occultism has been popularised, a certain class of theosophical literature has given rise to mistaken ideas as to the real goal of occult science. It has been contended that the goal is the annihilation of the body through asceticism and that reality is an illusion which must be conquered, reference being made to the ‘maya’ spoken of by Hindu philosophy. This is more than exaggeration; it is an actual error, contradicted by the science and practice of occultism.

Greek imagery compares the soul to a bee and this is much truer to the facts. Just as the bee emerges from the hive and gathers the juice of flowers to distil and make it into honey, so does the soul come forth from the Spirit, penetrates into reality and gathers its essence which is then borne back again to the Spirit.

Occultism does not disdain reality but seeks rather to understand and make use of it. The body is not merely the vesture, it is the instrument of the Spirit. Occultism is not a science which subordinates the body but teaches us how to use it for higher ends. Could we be said to understand the nature of a magnet if we described it merely as a piece of iron shaped like a horse-shoe? No, indeed. But we have understood if we say: ‘The magnet is a piece of iron having the power to attract other pieces of iron.’ Visible reality is wholly pervaded with a deeper reality and it is this deeper reality which the soul tries to penetrate and master.

For thousands of years the higher wisdom was guarded in profound secrecy by Occult Brotherhoods. A man had to belong to one of these Brotherhoods before he could learn even the elements of occult science. To enter a Brotherhood he had to pass certain tests and swear not to make wrong use of the truths revealed to him. But the conditions of civilisation, and particularly of the human intellect, have entirely changed since the sixteenth century and above all in the last hundred years under the influence of scientific discoveries. As the result of science, a certain number of truths pertaining to Nature and the world of sense—which in olden times were known only to Initiates—have become public property. Knowledge possessed by science today was once in the keeping of the Mysteries. The Initiates have always known that which all men were destined, in time, to know. That is why the Initiates have been called prophets.

The advent of Christianity wrought a great change in the manner of Initiation. Initiation since the time of Christ Jesus has not been the same as before His coming. We can only understand this by studying the nature of man and the seven fundamental principles of his being.

(1) The physical body, visible to the natural eye and familiar to science. As a purely physical being, man corresponds to the mineral world; he is a combination of all the physical forces of the universe.

(2) The etheric body. How does it become perceptible?

We know that hypnosis induces a different state of consciousness, not only in the hypnotised subject but also in the hypnotist, who suggests anything he pleases to his subject. He can make him think that a chair is a horse, or that the chair is not there, or again that there is nobody in a room which is really full of people. The Initiate consciously exercises a power whereby he can blot out from his vision the physical body of the person in front of him. Then, in place of the physical body he beholds, not an empty space, but the etheric body. This body somewhat resembles the physical body and yet it is different. It takes on the form of the physical body, extending slightly beyond it. The etheric body is more or less luminous and fluidic. Instead of organs there are currents of diverse colours, the heart being a veritable vortex of forces and streaming currents. The etheric body is the ‘etheric double’ of the material body. Man possesses it in common with the plants. It is not produced by the physical body as naturalists might be led to believe; on the contrary, the etheric body is the builder of every living organism. In the plant, as well as in man, it is the force of growth, rhythm and reproduction.

(3) The astral body has neither the form of the etheric nor of the physical body. It is an ovoid and extends beyond the body like a cloud, an aura. The astral body can take on all the colours of the rainbow, according to the passion by which it is animated. Each passion has its astral colour. Besides this, the astral body is, in a certain sense, the synthesis of the physical and etheric bodies, for the reason that the etheric body always has a contrary character to the sex of the physical body. The etheric body of a man is female; the etheric body of a woman is male. In both man and woman, the astral body is bisexual. In this sense, therefore, it is a synthesis of the two other bodies.

(4) The self—Manas in Sanscrit, Joph in Hebrew—is the intelligent, rational soul. It is the indestructible individuality which can learn to build the other bodies—the ‘inexpressible,’ the human self and the divine self.

The union of these four elements was venerated by Pythagoras in the sign of the tetragram.

The evolution of man consists in transforming the lower bodies with the aid of the self into spiritualised bodies. The physical body is the most ancient principle—hence the most perfect—of man's being. The task of the present epoch of human evolution is to transform the astral body.

In civilised man, the astral body is divided into two parts—a lower and a higher. The lower part is still chaotic and dark, the higher is luminous, penetrated even now by the forces of Manas—that is to say, it has a certain order and regularity.

When the Initiate has purified his astral body of all animal passions, when it has become wholly luminous (the first phase of Initiation), he has arrived at the stage of catharsis. Only then can he work at his etheric body and by this means ‘affix his seal’ to the physical body. Of itself, the astral body has no direct influence upon the physical body. Its forces must pass by way of the etheric body. The task of the disciple, therefore, is concerned with the transformation of the astral and etheric bodies in order, finally, to acquire full and complete control of the physical body. This is how he becomes a master.

We are touching here upon a marvelous law of human nature, proving that the self and Manas are the central points of man's development. When Manas dominates the astral and etheric bodies, man acquires new faculties and these in turn influence the spiritual and divine form of man. When Manas works upon the etheric body, light and power for the purpose of man's spiritual being (Budhi) are generated. When Manas works upon the physical body, light and power for man's divine Spirit (Atma) are generated. The evolution of man, therefore, amounts to a transformation of the lower bodies by the higher Self.

We have a paramount example of the working of the lower self in an anecdote told by Darwin. On one of his journeys he conversed with a cannibal and asked, through an interpreter, if he felt no repugnance against eating human flesh. Whereupon the savage burst into laughter, saying: “One must have tasted human flesh before one can know whether it is good to eat. And you know nothing about it whatever!”

The transformation of the astral body goes hand in hand with the control of feelings and their purification.

The lower part of the astral body of man in our age is dark; the higher part is limpid and full of colour. The higher part has been transmuted and permeated by the self but not the lower part as yet. When man has transformed the whole of his astral body we say that he has changed it into Manas. Not until then can he begin to work on the etheric body. There is a reason why this is so. Everything in the astral body is ephemeral. Everything that happens in the etheric body leaves an indelible trace which is, furthermore, impressed like a seal into the physical body.

The higher stages of Initiation consist in controlling all the phenomena connected with the physical body, in mastering and controlling them at will. The Initiate possesses Atma to the extent to which he achieves this; he becomes a sage and has power over Nature.

The difference between Eastern and Western Initiation lies in the method by which the master brings the pupil to the point of being able to work on his etheric body. Here we must consider the different conditions in which man finds himself during sleep and waking life.

During sleep the astral body is partly freed from the physical body and is in a condition of inactivity, but the vegetative activity of the etheric body continues.

At death, the etheric and astral bodies are wholly severed from the physical body. In the etheric body—which is the bearer of memory—inheres a remembrance of the past life and at the moment the etheric body frees itself, the dying have before them a tableau of their whole life. Freed from the physical body, the etheric body becomes much more sensitive and impressionable because it is no longer impeded by physical substance.

Oriental Initiation consisted in a process whereby the etheric and astral bodies of the neophyte were forced out of his physical body. He lay in a trance lasting three days and during this time the hierophant controlled his freed etheric body, poured impulses into him and taught him wisdom which remained as a powerful, lasting impression. When he awoke from the trance, the new Initiate found himself in possession of this wisdom, for the reason that memory inheres in the etheric body. The wisdom was occult doctrine but it bore the permanent and personal stamp of the hierophant who had imparted it. A man who had passed through this Initiation was said to be ‘twice-born.’

The process of Western Initiation is quite different. Eastern Initiation takes place while man is in a state of sleep; Western Initiation must be achieved in a state of wakefulness. In other words, there is no separation of the etheric and physical bodies. In Western Initiation the neophyte is free; the master simply plays the rôle of an awakener. He does not try to dominate or convert; he simply recounts what he himself has seen,—And how ought we to listen? There are three ways of listening: to accept the words as infallible authority; to be sceptical and fight against what is heard; to pay heed to what is said without servile, blind credulity and without systematic opposition, allowing the ideas to work upon us and observing their effects. This latter is the attitude which the pupil should adopt towards his master in Western Initiation.

The Initiator knows that he who is master must also be servant. It is not his task to mould the soul of his pupil to his own image but to discover and solve the enigma of this soul. The teaching given by the Initiator is not dogma; it is simply an impulse for development. Every truth that is not at the same time a vital impulse, is a sterile truth. That is why all thought must be filled with the element of soul. Thought must be permeated with feeling; otherwise it will not pass into the realm of soul and it will be stillborn thought.

The first thing to realise is that Yoga is not a sudden, convulsive event, but a process of gradual training, inner transformation. It does not consist, as is often supposed, in a series of external adjustments and ascetic practices. Everything must run its course in the depths of the soul.

It is often said that the first steps of Initiation are fraught with perils and grave dangers. There is a measure of truth in this. Initiation, or Yoga, is a coming-to-birth of the higher soul which lies latent in every human being. The astral body is faced with dangers analogous to those attending physical birth; there is travail before the divine soul comes forth from the desire-nature of man. The difference is that the birth of Spirit is a much longer process than that of physical birth.

Let us take another comparison. The higher soul is closely linked with the animal soul. By their fusion the passions are tempered, spiritualised and dominated according to the strength of man's intelligence and will. This fusion is of benefit to man but he pays for it by the loss of clairvoyance. Imagine to yourself a green liquid, produced by a combination of blue and yellow elements. If you succeed in separating them, the yellow will descend and the blue will rise to the surface. Something analogous happens when, through Yoga, the animal-soul is separated from the higher soul. The latter acquires clairvoyant vision; the former is left to its own devices if it has not been purified by the self and it is then given over to its passions and desires. This often happens in the case of mediums. The ‘Guardian of the Threshold’ protects man from this danger.

The first condition requisite for the Initiate is that his character shall be strong and that he shall be master of his passions. Yoga must be preceded by a rigorous discipline and the attainment of certain qualities, the first of which is inner calm. Ordinary ‘morality’ is not enough, for this relates merely to man's conduct in the outer world. Yoga is related to the inner man.

If it is said that compassion suffices, our answer will be: compassion is good and necessary but has nothing directly to do with occult training. Compassion without wisdom is weak and powerless.

The task of the occultist, of the true Initiate, is to change the direction of his life's current. The actions of man today are impelled and determined by his feelings—that is to say, by impulses from the outer world. Actions determined by space and time have no significance. Space and time must be transcended. How can we achieve this?

(1) Control of thought. We must be able to concentrate our thought upon a single object and hold it there.

(2) Control of actions. Our attitude to all actions, be they trivial or significant, must be to dominate, regulate and hold them under the control of the will. They must be the outcome of inner initiative.

(3) Equilibrium of soul. There must be moderation in sorrow and in joy. Goethe has said that the soul who loves is, till death, equally happy, equally sad. The occultist must bear the deepest joy and the deepest sorrow with the same equanimity of soul.

(4) Optimism—the attitude which looks for the good in everything. Even in crime and in seeming absurdity there is some element of good. A Persian legend says that Christ once passed by the corpse of a dog and that His disciples turned from it in disgust. But the Christ said: ‘Lo! the teeth are beautiful.’

(5) Confidence. The mind must be open to every new phenomenon. We must never allow our judgments to be determined by the past.

(6) Inner balance, which is the result of these preparatory measures. Man is then ripe for the inner training of the soul. He is ready to set his feet upon the path.

(7) Meditation. We must be able to make ourselves blind and deaf to the outer world and our memories of it, to the point where even the shot of a gun does not disturb. This is the prelude to meditation. When this inner void has been created, man is able to receive the prompting of his inner being. The soul must then be awakened in its very depths by certain ideas able to impel it towards its source.

In the book Light on the Path, there are four sentences which may be employed in meditation and inner concentration. They are very ancient and have been used for centuries by Initiates. Their meaning is profound and many-sided.

“Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears.”

“Before the ear can hear, it must have lost it's sensitiveness.”

“Before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters, it must have lost the power to wound.”

“Before the soul can stand in the presence of the masters, its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.”

These four sentences have magical power. But we must bring them to life within us, we must love them as a mother loves her child.

This, the first stage of training, has power to develop the etheric body and particularly its upper part which corresponds to the head. Having trained the upper part of the etheric body, the disciple must begin to control the systems of breathing and blood, the lungs and the heart. In remote ages of earthly evolution, man lived in the waters and breathed through gills like fish. Sacred literature indicates the time when he began to breathe the airs of heaven. Genesis says “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

The disciple must purify and bring about changes in his breathing system. All development proceeds from chaos to harmony, from lack of rhythm to rhythm (eurhythmy). Rhythm must be brought into the instincts.

In ancient times, the various degrees of Initiation were called by particular names:

First degree: The Raven (he who remains at the threshold). The raven appears in all mythologies. In the Edda, he whispers into the ear of Wotan what he sees afar off.

Second degree: the hidden Scholar, or the Occultist.

Third degree: the Warrior (struggle and strife).

Fourth degree: the Initiate bears the name of his people—he is a “Persian” or a “Greek” because his soul has grown to a point where it includes the soul of his people.

Sixth degree: the Initiate is a Sun-Hero, or Sun-Messenger, because his progress is as harmonious and, rhythmic as that of the Sun.

Seventh degree: the Initiate is a ‘Father,’ because he has power to make disciples of men and to be the protector of all; he is the Father of the new being, the ‘twice-born’ in the risen soul.

The Sun represents the vivifying movement and rhythm of the planetary system. The legend of Icarus is a legend of Initiation. Icarus has attempted to reach the Sun-sphere prematurely, without adequate preparation, and is cast down.

The new rhythm of breathing produces a change in the blood. Man is purified to the point of himself being able to generate blood without the aid of plant-nourishment. Prolonged meditation changes the nature of the blood. Man begins to exhale less carbon; he retains a certain amount and uses it for building up his body. The air he exhales is pure. He gradually becomes able to live on the forces contained in his own breath. He accomplishes an alchemical transmutation.

What are the higher stages of Yoga?

(1) The Initiate finds calm within his soul. Astral vision—where everything is a symbolic image of reality is acquired. This astral vision which arises during the sleeping state, is still incomplete.

(2) Dreams cease to be chaotic. Man understands the relation between dream-symbolism and reality; he gains control of the astral world. And then the inner astral light awakens in the soul who perceives other souls in their real being.

(3) Continuity of consciousness is set up between the waking state and the sleeping state. Astral life is reflected in dreams but in deep sleep, pure sounds arise. The soul experiences the inner words issuing from all beings as a mighty harmony. This harmony is a manifestation of reality; it was called by Plato and Pythagoras, the harmony of the spheres. This is not a poetic metaphor but a reality experienced by the soul as a vibration emanating from the soul of the world.

Goethe, who was initiated between the periods of his life at Leipzig and Strasburg, knew of the harmony of the spheres. He expressed it at the beginning of Faust in words spoken by the Archangel Raphael:

“The Sun makes music as of old
Amid the sister-spheres of heaven.
On its predestined circle rolls
With roar of thunder.”

In deep sleep, the Initiate hears these sounds as if they were the notes of trumpets and the rolling of thunder.

The rôle of Christianity in human history is unique. The coming of Christianity represents, in a sense, the central moment, the turning point between involution and evolution. That is why it radiates so brilliant a light—a light that is nowhere so pregnant with life as in the Gospel of St. John. Truth to tell it is only in this Gospel that the full power of the light is made manifest.

It cannot be said that modern theology has this conception of the Gospel. From the historical point of view it is considered inferior to the three synoptic Gospels, as being, in a sense, apocryphal. The very fact that its authorship is said by some to have taken place in the second century after Christ has made certain theologians of the school of Bible criticism regard it as a work of mystical poetry and Alexandrian philosophy.

Occultism has quite another conception of the Gospel of St. John.

During the Middle Ages a number of Brotherhoods saw in this Gospel the essential source of Christian truth. Such Brotherhoods were the Brothers of St. John, the Albigenses, the Catharists, the Templars and the Rosicrucians. All were engaged in practical occultism and looked to this Gospel as to their Bible. It may be said in a sense that the legend of the Grail, Parsifal and Lohengrin emanated from these Brotherhoods and that it was the popular expression of the secret doctrines.

All the members of these different parent Orders were considered to possess the secret. They were the precursors of a Christianity which should spread over the world in later times. In the Gospel of St. John they found the secret, for its words contained eternal truth—truth applicable to all times. Such truth as this regenerates the souls of all who become aware of it in the depths of their being. The Gospel was never regarded or read merely as a gem of literature. It was used as an instrument for developing the mystic life of the soul. Let us, to begin with, leave its purely historical value out of account.

The first fourteen verses of this Gospel were the subject of daily meditation among the Rosicrucians. These verses were held to possess a magical power—a fact well known to occultists. By repeating these verses at the same hour, day by day without intermission, the Rosicrucians began to see in dream-visions all the events recorded in the Gospel and lived through them in inner experience.

Thus in spiritual vision the Rosicrucians saw the life of Christ—nay indeed the Christ Himself being born in the depths of the soul. They believed, of course, in the actual and historic existence of the Christ, for to know the inner Christ is also to recognise the outer Christ.

A materialist of today might ask whether the fact that the Rosicrucians had these visions is any proof of the actual existence of Christ. To this the occultist will reply: ‘If there were no eye to perceive the sun, there would be no sun; but if there were no sun in the heavens, there would be no eye to perceive it. For it is the sun which in the course of ages has formed and built the eye in order that it may behold the light.’ In this sense the Rosicrucians said:—‘The Gospel of St. John awakens thine inner senses but if there were no living Christ, He could not live within thee.’

The mission accomplished by Christ Jesus cannot be understood in all its depths unless we realise the difference between the Ancient Mysteries and the Christian Mystery.

The Ancient Mysteries were held in the temple-sanctuaries. The Initiates were the awakened ones. They had learnt to work upon the etheric body and were the ‘twice-born’ because they could perceive truth in a two-fold sense: directly, through dream and astral vision, indirectly, through sense-perception and logic. The initiation through which they passed was accomplished, in three stages: life, death and resurrection. The disciple spent three days in a sarcophagus in a tomb of the temple. His Spirit was released from his body; but on the third day, at the call of the hierophant, the Spirit came down again into the body from the cosmic spaces of universal life. The man was a transformed, new-born being. The greatest Greek writers have spoken of these mysteries with great awe and inspiration. Plato goes so far as to say that the Initiate alone is worthy of the name of man. This ancient initiation has its crowning-point ‘in Christ.’ Christ represents the crystallised initiation of the life of sense. All that was supersensibly seen in the Ancient Mysteries becomes, in Christ, historic fact on the physical plane. The death undergone by the ancient Initiates was only a partial death in the etheric world. The death of Christ was a full and complete death in the physical world.

The Raising of Lazarus may be regarded as a moment of transition from the ancient initiation to the Christian initiation. In the fourth Gospel no mention is made of John himself until after the story of the death of Lazarus. “The disciple whom Jesus loved” is he who passed through the stages of death and resurrection in initiation and who was called to new life by the voice of Christ Himself. John is Lazarus who came forth from the tomb after his initiation; he lived through the death undergone by Christ. Such is the mystic path concealed in the depths of Christianity.

The marriage at Cana expresses one of the most profound mysteries of the spiritual history of mankind. It is related to the saying of Hermes: “The above is as the below.” In the marriage at Cana, water is changed into wine. The symbolic meaning of this miracle is that the sacrifice of water was to be replaced for a time by the sacrifice of wine.

There were ages in the history of man when wine was not known. In the days of the Vedas it was practically unknown. In the ages when there was no drinking of alcohol, the idea of previous existences and of many lives was universally held; nobody doubted its truth. As soon as man began to drink wine, however, the knowledge of re-incarnation rapidly faded away, ultimately to disappear entirely from the consciousness of man. It existed only among the Initiates who took no alcohol. Alcohol has a peculiarly potent effect on the human organism, especially on the etheric body which is the seat of memory. Alcohol obscures the intimate depths of memory. ‘Wine induces forgetfulness’—so the saying goes. The forgetfulness is not only superficial or momentary, but deep and permanent and there is a deadening of the power of memory in the etheric body. That is why, little by little, men lost their instinctive knowledge of reincarnation when they began to drink wine.

Belief in reincarnation and the law of Karma had a great influence not only upon the individual but upon his social sentiment. It helped him to bear with the inequalities of human life. When the unhappy Egyptian labourer was working at the Pyramids, or the lowest caste of Hindu building the gigantic Indian temples in the heart of the mountains, he said to himself that another existence would compensate him for labours patiently accomplished, that his master if he were good had already undergone similar tests or that he would have to undergo them in the future if he were unjust and cruel.

As the era of Christianity drew near, man was destined to enter upon an epoch of concentration upon earthly efforts; he was to work towards the amelioration of earthly existence, the development of intellect, of logical and scientific understanding of Nature. The knowledge of re-incarnation, therefore, was to be lost for two thousand years and wine was the means to this end.

Such is the profound background of the cult of Bacchus, the God of wine and intoxication. (Bacchus is the popular expression of the God Dionysos of the Ancient Mysteries to whom quite a different significance must be attached.) Such, too, is the symbolic meaning of the Marriage at Cana. Water served the purpose of the ancient sacrifice; wine was to serve the purpose of the new. The words of Christ, “Happy are they who have not seen and yet have believed,” refer to the new epoch when man—wholly given up to his earthly tasks—was to live without remembrance of his incarnations and without immediate vision of the divine world.

Christ has left us a testament in the scene on Mount Tabor, in the Transfiguration before Peter, James and John. The disciples see Him between Elias and Moses. Elias represents the Way of Truth; Moses, the Truth itself; Christ, the Life that epitomises them. That is why Christ can say of Himself: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

All life is thus concentrated, illumined, deepened and transfigured in Christ. He epitomises the past of the human soul back to its primal source and prefigures its future to the point of union with God. Christianity is not only a power of the past but of the future. In common with the Rosicrucians, the occultist of our day teaches of the Christ in the inner being of each individual and of the Christ, in the future, in all mankind.

Anyone today who strives from within to gain knowledge of the supersensible world is usually referred to the methods and results that come from ancient times. If one then takes a closer look at what is referred to, one encounters the so-called mysteries in the development of mankind. These were places where, on the one hand, religious and cultic life was cultivated - the spiritual flowed through the religious and cultic - and, on the other hand, what we call scientific knowledge was cultivated. The spiritual flowed into this other form of human perception. And a third aspect was the artistic, which was expressed in the mysteries. On the one hand, what flowed through religion, cult and science revealed itself to the senses, to the directly perceptible view of life. And on the other hand, what flowed through art revealed itself. Basically, humanity, which strives for the supersensible, still lives today from what tradition has preserved from ancient times.

In today's lecture, I do not want to speak of these old traditions, nor of the old mysteries; but I would like to speak of the possibility of a new mystery life, of the possibility of a new path to the supersensible worlds, which in its meaning and conception can be greater than what is demanded today as scientific knowledge by the enormous progress of scientific thinking in modern times.

When we look into our own inner being, we find the following activities within it: thinking, feeling and willing. Of these soul activities, only our thinking is independent of our physicality, as long as this thinking is healthy. The person who is able to completely surrender to the character of thinking with their soul knows that there can only be independent, logical laws because healthy thinking in the natural human being is independent of the physical. It is only when a person begins to think pathologically, when something morbid enters his thinking, that he becomes dependent on the physical. But what does that mean? It means nothing other than this: as long as thinking is healthy, it remains outside the physical; it only submerges into the body, only enters the unconscious when it becomes ill.

This is not the case with our feelings, nor with our will. In its completely normal state, our feeling submerges into physicality and is hardly conscious to us as something dream-like. It dwells entirely in physicality. It is the same with our will. In our ordinary lives, we are not aware of the actual process of willing because it is deeply submerged in physicality.

If we now want to attain a higher knowledge, then we must develop abilities as human beings that are just as independent as our ordinary thinking is from this physicality, but which are capable of perceiving higher worlds than this ordinary thinking, which in the present state of humanity is only capable of perceiving and dissecting the physical-sensual environment.

In the ancient mysteries, this release of spiritual abilities from the physical organization was brought about by external processes. Let us realize, for example, what effect a sound, a tone, that moves quickly, has on our soul, a sound that startles us. This rapid impression does not allow us to immerse what is happening emotionally in our soul in the physical. And if we experience shock, fear and dread in quick succession, we are able to hold the soul qualities outside the physical. The very methodical events of the ancient mysteries consisted of freeing the soul from the physical in this way. Frightening, dramatic processes that lead the soul life to a peak and then let it fall were designed to let people experience the soul life as something that remains outside the physical, not submerged in the physical. When a person came to after such processes, it was clear to him: during such experiences he had gained insight into a world into which he would not otherwise have seen. And he called this world the “supersensible”. Such external practices, which for the most part have taken on a cultic form in the old mysteries, are no longer suitable for modern humanity. They also presuppose that those who have been led to higher knowledge isolate themselves. The mysteries were strictly segregated sites, strictly governed by priestly sages who could arrange the external performance in such a way that a person really did develop the habit of keeping their soul independent of the body and, with this independent soul, of entering the spiritual world, by undergoing the process over a period of years.

Modern man would have no trust in people who have to seek the way into the spiritual world in this way. For these methods require strict separation of the spiritual seeker from the world, and in ancient times it was the case that one only had trust in the spiritual man when he separated himself from the rest of humanity. Today, one can only have trust in the man of knowledge if he is fully involved in life, if nothing is alien to him from the full, direct human life. Therefore, the present time and the near future will require methods for the path to the spiritual world that are more inwardly soul-based, so that in pursuing these methods, man is independent of external activities and influences. I would like to speak to you about methods for the path to the spiritual world that work quietly within the soul, but which lead just as surely to knowledge of the spiritual world, that is, to initiation, as the older methods of the mysteries led to this initiation.

In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” which has been translated into French as “Initiation,” I discuss the modern methods of initiation. This evening, I would like to speak in principle about what these modern methods of initiation are.

The beginning of the path to knowledge of spiritual worlds must be made through a special inner soul treatment of our world of thoughts, our powers of thought. In our ordinary life we devote ourselves to the outer world or to the thoughts that arise from our inner being. And however much we develop relative activity in this ordinary consciousness, in our thinking as a whole we are still passive, devoted to the sensual or the inner soul world. Indeed, modern man even places great value on remaining in this passivity of thought because he is afraid that in the moment when he forms his thoughts out of himself, he will enter the unreal, the realm of fantasy. This whole attitude towards thinking must change if man wants to enter the supersensible world. He must activate his thinking. I have named this activation of thinking 'meditation' after an old custom. It consists of our not giving ourselves over to our thinking, to anything objective, but rather, out of the inner strength of our soul life, we place a clear thought content of the simplest possible kind at the center of our consciousness and, for a certain period of time, with the exclusion of any other attention, we focus all the soul's attention on this one soul content.

When we rest actively with our whole soul on a soul content, something occurs with the soul forces that otherwise occurs with the physical forces when, for example, we use a muscle repeatedly in the course of our work. The muscle grows stronger. In the same way, the soul forces are strengthened and invigorated inwardly when the soul's activity is repeatedly directed towards one content. This content must be clear and transparent, because it must not contain anything that can come from the unconscious. We must rest entirely on this soul content with all the deliberation of which we are capable. If we take something complicated, something that may have been brought up from memory as reminiscences, something that is linked intellectually or emotionally to these old soul contents, that must not be. We therefore do best if we allow such soul content to approach us either by, let us say, taking a completely unknown book that we have certainly never read before, we open it somewhere, we read a sentence that otherwise does not interest us at all, the content of which otherwise has no interest for us. We place this sentence at the center of our consciousness and rest on it. We concentrate all our soul life on such content for a long time. It is even better if we can gain the confidence to go to someone who really has knowledge in these matters and have them give us a soul content of the characterized kind. Then, if he is already a spiritual researcher, he will have practice in simply telling us, from the mere sight of us, what kind of spiritual content is best for our meditation. If we take such a content, which is fully present in our consciousness and easy to grasp, concentrate on it, and remain in that concentration in a completely meditative way, our thinking will gradually be completely transformed. All abstractness in our thinking disappears, all coldness disappears. Thinking becomes entirely pictorial; we gain the ability to think in saturated images that become ever more saturated and colorful. Images that gradually resemble living dream images, but have a completely different soul character, enter our consciousness. We experience something that we have never experienced before in this consciousness. We experience the possibility of thinking as calmly as only the most calm logician or mathematician can think, but not in the abstract, not thinking natural laws, but thinking in images that we do not initially know where they come from.

This first step in the recognition of the supersensible may be called imaginative knowledge. We must develop these faculties if we want to enter the first sphere of the supersensible world. If such exercises are continued long enough — for some people, depending on their individuality, they take years, for some months — then the person finally comes to develop, in a sense complete, an ability to think in images, in the same way that one can think abstractly in ordinary consciousness; not dreaming in images, but being able to think in them. But then, when one has progressed far enough with such pictorial thinking, then one knows through direct awareness: this pictorial thinking does not descend into physicality, it is free and independent of physicality. One now feels oneself in this independent pictorial thinking, one lives entirely in it, one now lives in this independent pictorial thinking as one otherwise lives in one's physical body. Just as one feels in one's physical body with one's general bodily feelings, with all that one feels flowing from this body into the soul, perhaps in the form of pain or general well-being, in short, just as one feels in one's physical body, one now feels in a finer, in a second human being. One has detached this second person from this physical body and one can then say from inner experience, from direct life: I experience myself as a human being not only in the physical body, I experience myself as a human being in an etheric body, in a body of finer substantiality. One now knows from experience that a second person is contained in the first. Just as one can perceive through the physical tools of the physical body in the physical world, through the eye the colors, through the ears the sounds, so one can now - when one feels in the etheric body and knows oneself as a second person through this etheric body, which is organized in the same way as the physical body - perceive a new world that remains impenetrable to the physical body.

The first new world that one perceives is the world of one's own last life on earth. In a mighty tableau, majestically standing, everything that was in succession in time – simultaneously as in a panorama – our life on earth stands before us from the present moment in which we live, looking back to our birth. Just as things usually stand next to each other in space, so in this retrospective, the experiences we went through in the eighth year of life, for example, stand simultaneously with those we went through in the twentieth and fiftieth year of life. Time becomes like space. And what we experience there in vivid images in a majestic panorama of life, we learn to distinguish well from ordinary memory. The ordinary memory, which we bring forth in individual thoughts, ideas, images from our human nature, is weak and pale. What we see in this overview is full of content, powerfully colored, if I may use the expression. But everything also appears to us as external things appear to us. We now know, in the overview of a moment that is, however, expanding somewhat, how our life appears to a soul's gaze. And there it shows us that in every moment of our earthly existence since our birth, or rather since our conception, a spiritual-soul element has been surging and weaving within us. This spiritual-soul substance condenses into the power of growth, the power of nutrition, into all that surges and weaves in our physical body, but ultimately it is a spiritual substance that we see when we ascend to the first step of supersensible knowledge. But at the same time we learn to recognize, besides our own etheric body, the etheric world that is around us and to which our etheric body belongs; we learn to recognize how differently we relate to this etheric world - which is there like the physical world - than to the physical world. In the physical world, the thing is there, I am there. I speak of physical things as something that is strictly separate from me; I point to it. With the etheric world, I am connected through my etheric body in the same way that a limb of my organism is connected to the whole organism. And just as a limb, my finger, separates itself from my organism, so the etheric body separates itself from the etheric universe, but it is still a limb in it. We are much more one with the world that stands behind the physical world than the physical body is one with the physical world. That is the first step in the supersensible world, and that is also the first supersensible world that we reach on the way to supersensible knowledge. The level of supersensible knowledge that I have described so far does not go further than an insight into this essence of human nature, which from birth to death develops and changes as a unity, but remains permanent remain throughout our entire life on earth, while the individual substances that we absorb are absorbed by us and then expelled by us, so that we, as physical human beings, are constantly renewing ourselves, even during our life on earth. That which is the etheric body remains as a unity from birth to death.

But if we want to go beyond this first supersensible realm, then a second level of knowledge must be developed within the soul. This can be done by activating our thinking, which we had to do in order to grasp and take hold of ourselves in our etheric body, so that we can grasp and take hold of ourselves in our etheric body, and then, for the second level of knowledge, we must again remove from our consciousness everything we gain in this way through activated thinking. Once we have firmly brought a content into our soul by concentrating with all our might, we must now leave it out again. You know what state a person enters when they have to remove the usual content of their soul, the world that the senses give them: they fall asleep. Gradually, they sink into a paralysis of the soul. This must not happen and does not happen. It is difficult to remove from the soul the content that we have brought into consciousness with all our strength. It is harder to remove this content than the content of ordinary consciousness. But if we succeed in removing it, something has occurred that is otherwise never there. A complete emptiness of consciousness has occurred in the human soul life. Through what the human being has gone through in the powerful experience of his own etheric body, he becomes able to abstract, to detach himself from all the sense world and from all ordinary thinking. He lives in a higher region. If he now removes this higher region, his own life tableau, then his consciousness becomes empty and we are in that state that is significant for all higher knowledge: we are in the state of mere waking, without this waking having any soul content. We direct an intensified, strengthened consciousness out into the emptiness of the world. We do not fall asleep while performing this task, but we remain awake, but for a moment we are only confronted with nothingness. This does not last long. When we have maintained mere waking in our consciousness, real empty consciousness, then a spiritual world penetrates into us that is not our etheric body, not that which is related to it, but which is now a spiritual world that is initially very distant. The real spiritual world penetrates into mere waking and empty consciousness, but this empty consciousness and waking must be acquired through long soul exercises, which I could only describe in principle. For this suppression of all content does not succeed at the first attempt. It must be practiced again and again. Again, for some it takes years, for some, if they are predisposed to it, depending on their destiny, it takes months to achieve that they can keep their consciousness empty without lulling it to sleep, so that the spiritual world can penetrate them.

Of course, one could say that when a person enters the spiritual world, it could be mere suggestion, an autosuggestion. How can one distinguish between suggestion and what the spiritual researcher, the initiate, calls the real spiritual world? One can only distinguish between them through life. Just as one distinguishes in life between a hot potato that has been imagined and a real hot potato, because one does not get burnt by an imaginary hot potato, but one does get burnt by a real hot potato, so one experiences real facts in the spiritual world that flows into the empty consciousness. One simply knows, just as one can distinguish a real live issue from an imagined one, through life, whereby this spiritual reality is distinguished from mere autosuggestion.

In the book mentioned earlier, I referred to this second stage of supersensible knowledge as inspired knowledge, according to an old usage that need not be objected to – we need a terminology. When one arrives at inspired knowledge, one experiences oneself, as it were, still in a third man. First there is the physical human being, then the etheric human being, and now one experiences oneself in a third human being. But by experiencing oneself in this third human being, one knows oneself not only through the strengthened, imaginative thinking independently of one's physical body, but completely outside of one's physical body. One has attained the state that can be called: life in the spirit outside of the physical body. Then the human being is also able to leave the etheric body, that is, as he has erased all imaginative content from his consciousness, he can completely erase this life tableau, to which he first came, and dive into the unconscious and live outside of his physical and etheric existence. But then, when a person achieves this, the retrospective view extends further into the past than just to the birth or conception: we look into a spiritual world in which we were as spiritual beings before we descended into the physical world. We see ourselves acting and living in this spiritual world, just as we see ourselves as physical human beings in the physical world. We learn to recognize that what nature develops as our physical human germ must unite with what descends from the spiritual worlds, for that is what we now see for ourselves. And when we have attained this knowledge, through which we go completely out of our physical and etheric bodies, then, when we go back again – that is, when the moment of our beholding the spiritual world has ceased – we look into our own physical and etheric bodies and find that our earthly life is a reflection in the soul-spiritual of what we were in the spiritual-soul before we descended to earth. And precisely by entering into our body again, into the physical and etheric body, we acquire the power of a, I would say, configured, individualized vision. Now that we are experiencing more of the general spiritual world that we passed through in our pre-earthly existence outside of our physical body and our etheric body, now that we are returning to the physical and etheric body, now we are learning, not by immersing ourselves, dive into them, but I would say to dwell in them, to live in our physical and etheric bodies, now we learn to distinguish between the spiritual beings of a higher world, with whom we were united before we descended to earthly life, and how we distinguish between individual human beings here. We learn to recognize beings that never descend to earth, that never take on a physical body, divine spiritual beings. We are fellow inhabitants of the spiritual world with them before we descend to this earth. And we learn to see, precisely because we can now be alternately outside and inside our body with the spiritual and soul, we also learn to recognize how human souls are now among these higher spiritual and soul beings, among whom we were before we descended to earth, waiting to descend to earth in order to experience it in a later time than we did.

And so, through this stage of inspired knowledge, we learn to recognize that part of the eternity of the human being that is very little considered by our sense of time, even by the religious. The present does not like to look at the pre-earthly existence. It is true that man is interested in facing up to what lies beyond death, even if only through faith or tradition, because that must come first, while man is present and therefore does not need to reflect particularly on what existed before birth. He is here, after all! But whether he will also remain here is of interest to him; in his selfishness he is interested in the second part of eternity, immortality. We do not even have a word in modern languages for the other half of eternity, for the pre-earthly existence, which is as infinite in the past as immortality is in the future. For in truth, one only comes to recognize the eternity of human life when one can again point to the words that the original languages had for eternity, and which spoke just as meaningfully of unbornness as of immortality. More recent esoteric teachings on initiation again define the eternity of the human being as consisting of the unborn and the immortal. However, the unborn is needed less for selfishness than for true knowledge. People can remain with mere belief when it comes to the immortal. Only by looking at the unborn within me, not only at the immortal, can I learn to recognize the unborn, the certainty that a spiritual essence, existing before my physical formation, is my being.

When one has emerged from one's physical and Arther body in this way and feels among spiritual beings, as one previously felt among physical beings and things in the physical body, one always knows oneself as a human being, as this particular self. And so, in a sense, one only has to start the journey back, going backwards through the sequence of times into the world that one has lived through before life on earth. But if a person, when he feels himself outside his physical and etheric bodies within a spiritual world, then looks down at the world of the stars, and the stars no longer appear to him as stars, but as worlds where higher or even lower entities dwell, then everywhere where there is a star for the physical eye, there is a world sphere of other entities. When man, as he otherwise feels in the physical body on earth, now feels in the starry world in a spiritual world, then one can speak of the astral body, as one speaks of the etheric body in the first stage of supersensible knowledge, because one is now within the spirituality of the starry world.

If man wants to progress further, then he must add to imagination and to the empty consciousness a third faculty of perception, a faculty of perception that is very often not regarded as a faculty of perception by today's consciousness. It is an ability that plays the greatest conceivable role in human life, but which is not recognized as having any right to be part of knowledge. That is the human power of love: love that brings people together in such a way that they approach the being they love through the physical body or through the embodied soul or embodied spirit. By further developing this love, so that this love can reach into the experience of the etheric body first, but that one can also bring this love over into the experience in the astral body, by further developing this ability to love, we finally not only come to but we gradually develop the ability to increase our love to such an extent that we not only see other beings, but also enter into a relationship with these other spiritual beings – we ourselves then become spirit – in the same way that we have entered into a relationship with physical people on earth. Intuition gives us the opportunity to interact with spiritual beings, just as physical abilities give people the opportunity to interact with physical people on earth. But when we have developed our ability to love to such an extent that the spiritual becomes objective to us, as the sensual is objective to us in the physical world, then we not only look back into our pre-earthly spiritual existence, but we look back into earlier earth lives, and it becomes a fact that we go through the whole human life in forms of existence between birth and death and then between death and a new birth, again from birth to death, again from death to a new birth, that we live through life in successive earthly lives and in successive purely spiritual lives. We learn to look back on our previous earthly lives and see the present, current life as a repetition of these earlier ones.

But no one can arrive at the realization of what he was like, what he was, that he even existed in a past life, who has not progressed to the point of developing love to the point that he can face himself as well as another, as another being faces him. There must be a mighty difference between the ordinary power of perception and that power of perception steeped in love, through which we see our previous lives on earth as we see the life of another person in the present. When we ascend to this level, which I have called the intuitive, the truly intuitive level, we see ourselves in our mind's eye as spiritually effective beings in repeated earthly lives. Only then are we completely outside of our physical life. But he who experiences this, he knows what death is. Death now stands before him as the external, objective realization of what he himself has experienced in knowledge. Just as he has discarded his physical and etheric bodies in knowledge, so he knows that death only discards the physical and etheric bodies, and that through the gate of death man enters into a spiritual world. Belief becomes knowledge, opinion becomes insight. We are given certain, exact, vivid science by that which we otherwise call immortality in life. We look at the immortality of our own human life, at the entry of this own human being into a post-mortal life, as we look at a prenatal spiritual life, at a pre-earthly life.

But we also look at what has developed between people in physical life during physical life on earth, at the relationships that exist in the family, where one person comes into contact with another, at the relationships that are brought about through love and friendship in human life. We look at all of this. Just as the physical body of the individual falls away at death, and the soul ascends into a spiritual world, so too, when people who have been brought together on earth by their destiny have passed through the gate of death and find themselves there among higher beings, what is physical in friendship, in love relationships on earth, falls away, and a more soulful, all the more intimate life together then occurs. Modern initiation can only show how to find the path that is otherwise a matter of mere belief, through seeing, to secure for knowledge that which is immortality, the other side of eternity.

Thus man ascends through imaginative knowledge to the view of that which lives between birth and death. Man then ascends when he acquires this knowledge to his etheric body. Inspired knowledge leads man to his astral body, and through it he enters the world he passed through before his birth, which he will enter again after death. In the astral body, one becomes acquainted with the pre-earthly and post-mortal life spheres of the human being. In the ascent to intuitive knowledge, one becomes acquainted with the fourth aspect of the human being, the true, eternal self, which passes from earth-life to earth-life and which, between individual earth-lives, has purely spiritual forms of existence.

In conclusion, now that this path of modern initiation has been sketched out in a few strokes, at least in principle, let me say this: when one looks at the ancient knowledge that was acquired in the manner described at the beginning, through external cultic and other events, this knowledge was more dream-like, instinctive. And from old instinctive, dream-like knowledge, men's convictions about the supersensible, about the spiritual, have finally emerged and remained as tradition. But today one can already sense that more people than they realize have the urge, the deep longing to rediscover the paths to the spiritual worlds. Few people are the first to admit this consciously, but in the subconscious, if one is able to see such things, one can see today how numerous people are who long for mysteries again because they want to find the way to supersensible worlds.

We were only able to make a timid beginning with what we call the Goetheanum in northwestern Switzerland, where a place of mystery was created, where man was to find a way into the supersensible in a similarly modern and prudent way as he found a way into the mysteries in ancient times in a more instinctive way. Enemies have snatched this place from us. It was destroyed by arson some time ago. These things also have their eternity. The physical fire could take from us the physical building, the Goetheanum, the physical building in which until then that spiritual science had been cultivated, of which I was allowed to give you a hint. But there is also a spiritual fire. This spiritual fire does not burn physical sites, but will always let them arise again. In the new mysteries, the students of spiritual wisdom will approach their task quietly and not as noisily as in the old mysteries. They, in turn, will bring people the knowledge of the eternal in man and the world that they so urgently need. For people need this knowledge for their thinking, for their feeling and willing, so that they may come to clarity within themselves, to a life of inner harmony, and so that they may also gain strength and security for their outer life. He needs the connection with the spiritual world. And something like the spiritual school in Dornach, on the border of Switzerland towards the northwest, will awaken more and more as a longing in human souls, born out of humanity's eternal urge for the spiritual. This urge rested for a while through centuries. These centuries have brought people the magnificent external knowledge of nature. Today, man stands and knocks again at the door that leads to the supernatural, because he cannot advance his soul with knowledge of nature. That which yearns for the spiritual world, consciously in a few people but unconsciously in a large part of humanity, can only be satisfied by the modern mysteries. Anyone who is sincere about the spiritual world will see that people will definitely crave new mysteries in the future, because spirituality will only come back to people when new mysteries arise in which people can find the spirit in a more sober and enlightened way than in the old mysteries, but in which they can be led in a more developed and perfect way through the mysteries back to the spiritual, divine world and thus to the source of humanity.

In the course of these lectures we have said repeatedly that Christianity constitutes the decisive midpoint of human evolution. All religions have their right to exist—they were partial revelations of the Logos—but none has changed the face of the world as much as Christianity. One can feel this influence in the words of John's Gospel, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:29) The words, “those who have not seen,” refer to those people who had no knowledge of the mystery religions. An essential part of the ancient mysteries is made public through Christianity, for example, the most important commandments concerning morality, and the teaching concerning the immortality of the soul through resurrection or rebirth.

Before Christianity, one could see super-sensible truth in the revelations, rites, and dramatic presentations of the mysteries. Now, however, one can believe in the super-sensible thanks to the divine person of Christ. There had always been a difference between the esoteric truth known to initiates, and its exoteric form—appropriate for the great masses—which came to expression through the various religions. The same holds true for Christianity. What is found in the Gospels is the new good tidings, promulgated for all to hear. But there was a deeper teaching. It is contained in the Apocalypse in the form of symbols.

There is a way to read the Apocalypse that can be made public only in our time. It was cultivated in the Middle Ages in the occult schools of the Rosicrucians. At that time historical questions concerning the book were considered unimportant. These were questions concerning its composition and the identity of the author; in short, all that which occupies the sole interest of theologians today, who seek nothing more than historical facts in this book. Modern critical theology knows only the external shell of this book and ignores the kernel. The Rosicrucians stayed with the prophetic aspect, the eternal truth of the book.

Occultism is not usually concerned with the history of a single century or a single era, but rather with the inner history of human evolution as a whole. This is true when it delves into the first manifestations of our planetary system, when it looks into the distant past at the vegetative and animal conditions of humanity, and when its perspective expands over millions of years forward to a future when humanity will have become divine. The earth itself will have changed then both in form and substance. But how can the future be guessed? Is prophecy really possible? It is possible because all that is to take place physically in the future already exists in seed form in the womb of the archetypes whose thoughts form the plan for our evolution. Nothing appears on the physical plane that was not already planned and preformed in general outline in the region of devachan. Nothing happens in the depths that did not exist before in the heights. That is the way things are realized. They depend upon the freedom and initiative of the individual.

Esoteric Christianity is not based on vague and sentimental idealism but rather on a concrete ideal that originates in knowledge of higher worlds. This is the knowledge that the writer of the Apocalypse had, the great seer of Patmos, who sketched the future of humankind in Christian perspective.

Let us consider this future according to the laws of world creation just described. The Rosicrucians first revealed to their pupils some visions from the past and the future. Then the pupils were given the Apocalypse to interpret these visions. Let us do the same and observe how humanity has become what it is, and what future will open for it.

We have, for example, spoken of the ancient Atlantean continent and of the Atlanteans whose etheric body was far more developed than their physical body. Their preliminary consciousness of self, their I-consciousness, came to them only at the end of their culture. The successive post-Atlantean cultures were: First, the pre-Vedantic culture in southern Asia, in India. That was the beginning of the Aryan cultures; second, the epoch of Zarathustra, including the culture of ancient Persia; third, the Egyptian culture, the epoch of Hermes, to which are attached the Chaldean and Semitic cultures. The first seeds of Christianity were sown during this age in the womb of the Hebrew peoples; fourth, the Greco-Latin cultural epoch that experienced the birth of Christianity; and fifth, a new epoch was prepared at the time of the mass migrations and wars of conquest in the fourth through the sixth centuries.

The legacy of the Greco-Latin culture was taken over by the northern races: Celts, Germans, and Slavs. This is the epoch in which we are now still living. It is a slow transformation of the Greco-Latin cultural heritage brought about through the powerful element of the new peoples under the mighty impulse of Christianity. This impulse has also been mixed with the leaven of the East brought to Europe through the Arabs. The actual goal of this cultural epoch is to adapt the human being fully to the physical plane. This occurs when our reason, our practical commonsense is developed and our intellect delves into physical matter in order to understand and master it. In the course of this hard work, this astonishing achievement that has culminated in our time, human beings have momentarily forgotten the higher worlds of their origin. By comparing our spiritual soul constitution with that of the Chaldeans, for example, it is easy to see what we have won and what we have lost. When Chaldean magicians observed the heavens, which present for us nothing more than a problem in celestial mechanics, they had an entirely different idea, an entirely different feeling, one could say, a totally different experience than we. Where a modern astronomer sees nothing more than a soulless machine, the ancient magicians felt the harmony of the heavens depths as a divine, living being. When they observed Mercury, Venus, the moon, or the sun, they saw not only the physical light of these heavenly bodies, they perceived the planets' souls as belonging to living beings, and they felt their own souls in connection with these great beings of the firmament. They perceived the influence of heavenly bodies as attraction and repulsion, like a wonderful concert of streaming, flowing divine will; and the symphony of the cosmos sounded forth in the magicians like a harmonious echo of the human microcosm. In this way the music of the spheres was a reality that united human beings with heaven.

The superiority of the modern scholar is rooted in knowledge of the physical world, of matter. Spiritual science has descended to the physical plane we know so well. However, we must now be concerned with again achieving knowledge of the astral plane through clairvoyance.

This descent into matter was necessary for the fifth epoch to fulfill its mission. Astral and spiritual clairvoyance had to be veiled so that the intellect could develop itself on the field of the sense world through minute, mathematical observation of the physical world.

Now we must supplement natural science with spiritual science. Here is an example: Ptolemy's map of the heavens is usually placed next to that of Copernicus and then the former is declared to be false. This is, however, not true. They are equally justified. Ptolemy's map is concerned with the astral plane wherein the earth forms the center point of the planets and the sun is itself a planet. Copernicus's map is concerned with the physical plane where the sun is in the middle. All truths are relative according to time and place. Ptolemy's system will be rehabilitated in an epoch yet to come.

After our fifth epoch another will come, the sixth, which will be related to ours as a spiritually minded soul is related to a rationally inclined soul. This epoch will bring genius, clairvoyance, the creative spirit, to development. How will Christianity appear in the sixth epoch? There was a harmonious union of science and faith for the ancient priests of the pre-Christian age. Science and faith were one and the same thing. When the ancient priests observed the firmament they knew and felt that the soul was a drop of water that had fallen from the heavenly ocean and had been led down to earth by immeasurable rivers of life that flow through space. Today, when our sight is directed only to the physical world, faith needs a free space, a religion. For this reason science and faith are separated. The faithful reverence of the person of Christ, the god of the human being on the earth, has for a certain time taken the place of occult science and the mysteries. But the two streams will be united in the sixth epoch. The mechanical science of the physical plane will be elevated to the heights of spiritual creative power. That will be gnosis or spiritual knowledge. This sixth epoch will be radically different from ours. Great, tumultuous catastrophes will precede it, for the sixth epoch will be just as spiritual as ours is materialistic, but such a transformation can only occur through great, physical upheavals. Everything that will be formed in the course of the sixth epoch will call into existence the possibility of a seventh epoch which itself will form the end of these post-Atlantean cultures and will know completely different conditions of life from our own. This seventh epoch will end with a revolution of the elements, similar to the one that brought an end to the Atlantean continent. The condition of the earth that will then appear will have a spirituality prepared through the last two post-Atlantean epochs.

The Aryan cultures encompass seven great epochs. We see the laws of evolution slowly unfolding. Human beings always carry within themselves what they will see around them in future times. All that presently exists around us actually came forth from us in preceding ages when our being was still united with the earth, the moon, and the sun. This cosmic being, from which the present human being together with all the kingdoms of nature have arisen, is called in the Kabbala, “Adam Kadmon.” All of the manifold forms of men and women presently represented by ethnic groups and races were contained in this human archetype.

What human beings possess today as their inner soul life, their thoughts, their feelings, will similarly be revealed externally and become the environment in which people live. The future resides in the hearts of men and women. The choice is ours to decide for a future of good or of evil. Just as it is true that the human being once left behind something that then became the world of animals, so too, what is evil in the human being will one day form a kind of degenerate humanity. At the present time we can more or less hide the good or evil within us. A day will come when we can no longer do this, when the good or the evil will be written indelibly on our forehead, on our body, and even on the face of the earth. Humanity will then be split into two races. In the same way that we encounter boulders or animals today, in the future we will encounter beings of pure evil and ugliness. When a human being's facial features become an expression of that individual's karma, then people will separate themselves according to the stream in which they apparently belong. Everything depends on whether human beings have conquered the lower nature within them or whether this lower nature has triumphed over the spirit.

Beginning in the past we can see the lines of a future reality beginning to form. To the extent that we are prepared to understand the past and to work in the present we can realize the ideal of this future reality. A new race will be formed that will constitute the connecting link between present-day humanity and the spiritualized human being of the future. But one must distinguish between the evolution of races and the evolution of souls. It lies within the freedom of every single soul to develop itself toward this external form of a race, whose character corresponds to the good that it will incarnate. Individuals will belong to this race only through the exercise of their free will and through a great exertion of their soul forces. Membership in a race will no longer be forced upon a soul, but rather it will be the result of an individual's evolution.

The meaning of Manichean teaching is that, from now on, souls should prepare themselves to transform into good the evil that will appear in its full strength in the sixth epoch. Indeed, it will be necessary for human souls to become strong enough to protect, through a spiritual alchemy, the good from the evil that will come to light.

The evolution of our planet earth will lead it back through the former phases of its development in reversed order. First the earth will unite with the moon, then a union—a reunion—of this mixed-world body with the sun will occur. The reuniting of the moon with the earth will coincide with a high tide of evil on the earth. In contrast to this, the union of the earth with the sun will mark the beginning of blessed happiness, the reign of the chosen people.

Human beings will bear the mark of the seven great phases of earth evolution. The book of the seven seals spoken of in the Apocalypse will be opened. The woman dressed in the sun and with the moon under her feet is related to the time when the earth will be united again with the sun and the moon. The trumpets of the last judgment will sound forth, for the earth will have arrived in a devachanic condition, where tone, not light, will rule. The end of earthly evolution will stand in the sign of the Christ principle that will permeate all of humankind. Human beings will have become similar to Christ; they will gather around Christ like a multitude around the lamb, and the New Jerusalem will arise as the fruit of this evolution. It represents the crowning of the world.